Page 33 of Fallen: Darkness Ascending, Vol.1

XATHANAEL

I hadn’t gone far. I could still hear the conversation reverberating up the spiral staircase in the entry to our sanctuary. By human standards, I shouldn’t have been able to hear that Rhymael was the supposed father of Faith, but then again, I was fucking human now was I?

And I wasn’t a fucking angel either.

Ugh, I don’t have fucking time for this. A nephilim? One born of a goddamn archangel? Are you fucking kidding me? We’re sitting fucking ducks.

It was damp here, the perma-wet walls of the tunnel that led down beneath this section of abandoned subway glistening. It drip, drip, dripped, and I was going to tear my fucking hair out if I had to be trapped down here with the three of them a moment fucking longer.

Simiel and Cadriel were enough of a damn menace.

I didn’t need a fucking woman dragging her nonsense up into my home and ruining the sliver of peace I’d tried so fucking hard to steal for us.

It wasn’t like life was easy breezy after we fell.

That was the damn point, and Faith’s arrival was jeopardizing everything.

I’d pulled my bloodied body off the rocks to try and survive. I’d held on for years through pain and constant threat of attack. This was going to ruin everything.

“Umm…there was a shooting.” Faith’s voice rumbled up the stairs, infecting my brain, and I clenched my jaw hard enough to make it crack.

Her voice had no right to sound both husky and innocent. Thoughts of stuffing up that mouth of hers hit me hard, dark needs to make her struggle for breath, to make her cry…

“What shooting? That’s probably a big deal, yeah?

” Simiel was first to jump into the conversation, of course.

He was fucking like that, an annoying, persistent prick.

I couldn’t tell if I preferred him as an angel or a fallen.

He’d been a little shit regardless, falling just meant that he had even more license to be a fucker.

Those same dark inklings tugged at me again, memories of seeing him and Cadriel blooming behind my eyes. I was ready to pull them out. I didn’t have time for any of that. I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted.

“Some guys. They, umm, they attacked the chief when I was six.” I could hear Faith’s voice crack from here.

I needed to get the fuck out of here, but I couldn’t leave.

If I went topside, I’d breach the wards.

Those were the only things keeping the angels from finding us, and if they did, they’d kill us like any common demonic scum, even if we weren’t strictly demons.

Sure, we weren’t angels anymore, but we hadn’t been born in hell, and we still retained our grace. It was just…corrupted.

“Still not seeing how this is relevant, sugar.” Simiel’s goddamn voice grated on my nerves, the chosen Southern twang making me want to punch the fucker in the jaw.

He wasn’t supposed to emulate the fucking humans.

But hell, all of us were supposed to be so far up our asses about them, and it was more than enough to me that we fucking tolerated them.

Hence falling.

Don’t want to love on the upright apes? Get booted.

Or in Simiel’s case, get too into the upright apes and get booted. Ugh. He’s lucky he didn’t fucking make a nephilim himself .

“I…I can only remember bits and pieces, but the men who’d tried to m-mug the chief died—fast and brutal. I…I’ve always thought it was me. They were just…gone. In a flash. The chief…Joshua…Umm…”

Faith paused, and even from here, I could hear the tremble in her voice, the scent of fallen rain signaling her tears. Dammit. She’s fucking crying?

“He was bleeding out…God, my head is splitting . I?—”

“Faith, you don’t need to get into this now. The sanctuary…” Cadriel’s voice wavered, and I could sense his concerns. Looking around, the walls were rumbling again. The ethereal wards protecting us flickered, their invisible neon blue wavering as Faith’s emotions surged.

Fuck .

“No, I have to. I have to get this out! I have to! I…I killed them, Cadriel. I murdered those assholes when I was six, and I don’t fucking regret it for a second!”

Well, damn. That was…actually impressive. Annoying and very potentially problematic, but impressive nonetheless. Simiel and Cadriel were giving off waves of concern that I could read even from here, and I realized that I could also track the chaotic emotions surging off Faith as well.

I shouldn’t be able to do that. No way means…dammit!

I’d begrudgingly accepted that those two assholes down there were part of my fated flock, but a nephilim? How the hell would destiny even be able to plan for that? She shouldn’t exist. She was a crime. She couldn’t be part of it. Unless…was Faith somehow…preordained .

By something that wasn’t his holy on-high? Oh, fucking hell. Like I don’t already have enough problems.

The walls were still trembling, and I could sense the wards waning in strength—an archangel nephilim. The power one might have was monumental and undocumented. We had no way of knowing what Faith was capable of.

If we were smart, we’d kill her now and get it over with. No nephilim, no problem.

And yet, I couldn’t. I’d known the moment I saw Faith that I wouldn’t be able to just kill her, which was a damn first for me.

She was so dangerous, but being around her was dangerous .

Chaining her up and draining her still held promise.

If she were nearly bled dry, conjuring those powers would be a hell of a lot harder.

I had to admit that getting a taste of her also sounded damn good.

“Faith, please try to steady your emotions,” Cadriel pleaded, and I could just picture their face all screwed up with worry.

“You don’t understand!” Faith sounded more and more unhinged, and I knew that sound. I’d made it myself. She was dropping into the throes of angelic wrath. Dammit .

The ground beneath my feet was being thoroughly tested; I could feel it wanting to give way. The angels would pick up on it. They’d sense a surge of angelic wrath better than anything else, and she was a nephilim. That meant Faith’s was stronger, more destructive.

I shook my head, pinching my eyes closed against the flickering neon wards slowly dying. Everything we’d built, everything I’d put in place to keep my flock safe, was crumbling around me. Unsteady, chaotic change. And I fucking hated change .

“Shit.” Sucking in a fresh breath of that damn earth and metal smell, I spun on my heel and rushed back down the stairs, the steps clanging beneath my boots as I sprinted into the makeshift living room.

When I got there, Faith was just past Simiel and Cadriel. Her aura was flickering with subtle flames that swirled around her, sparks of yellow-orange and blue-white. She looked up at my approach, and I met her eyes. Eyes that were glowing such a bright gold that I knew the others had been right.

She was the daughter of Rhymael, the archangel.

I shoved past my brethren and got right in front of Faith, grabbing her by the shoulders, intent on snapping some sense into her.

The moment our skin touched, my entire body zinged with electricity, slithering down my nerves like billions of microscopic explosions.

No. Goddamn it, no. I don’t have fucking time for this!

But arguing against the claim was pointless.

There was nothing I could do about it, or anyone else for that matter.

Still, this was bad. Faith threatened everything I had.

She was dangerous because of her abilities, yes.

But she was even more dangerous because of who was coming after her—the very angels my flock and I had left behind and had spent decades on the run from.

Faith called to me, though, that unspoken, irrefutable pull, and as our stares met, her golden eyes flared wide, the whirlwind of fire freezing in place around her.

The ground beneath us was still desperate to crumble, and I could hear her thoughts inside my head, as if her soul had infiltrated mine, awakening something dark and ancient and profound.

I could see her on her knees for me. I could see her stripped bare and at my mercy, her body pushed past its limits at my command. It took longer than I cared to admit for me to shove the images aside. The building was still rumbling, and this needed to be dealt with—now.

“You need to fucking calm down,” I growled, gripping Faith’s shoulders so tightly I was sure to leave bruises on her smoky quartz skin.

She shook her head, her eyes having difficulty holding mine. “What is that? Why can I… feel you?”

Faith was trapped in this crystalline bubble of ethereal power with me, and when it shattered, the entire host of archangels searching for us all was going to come running.

“I will explain. But you need to pull it back, Faith. You’re going to call the angels here.”

“This isn’t my fucking fault! Everyone makes it seem like I chose this but I fucking didn’t!

” She was fracturing down the middle, the weight of her human pain at odds with the intensity of her angelic powers, squeezing her hands open and shut repeatedly.

“Death after death after death. And I know it’s because of me.

You all just told me as much! I just want to live my damn life.

Why is that so much to ask? No one accepts me or understands.

They just see a fucked up defect . I’m broken and everyone can see it wherever I go. ”

She crumbled to her knees, the air rumbling with static thunder as she shook her head and rocked.

And as much as I hated it, as much as it pissed me off, as much as I wanted to sever this connection and stick with my current life, I related to her.

I knew exactly what she meant. We were all defective angels, our programming going against nearly every angelic code, and they all hated us for it.

Me especially. I saw that pain. Hell, I lived it.

I’d been cast out first, my battalion refusing to accept an archangel who couldn’t obey every order, one who questioned.

One who wanted independence and individuality.

I didn’t want to be the mold. I wanted to live outside it.

If the humans got to choose when and where and how they fucked up, they why couldn’t we?

I saw her. I saw Faith for exactly what she was.

“We need to stop this. They’ll be here in seconds. I can feel the wards failing. I?—”

“Yeah, Caddie, we get it.” Simiel gripped their hand, squeezing as he tried to offer his partner the bit of insight they never seemed to pick up on easily.

“I…I got this.” They both stared at me like I’d lost my mind, and maybe I had.

Dropping to my knees in front of Faith, I lifted her chin so that she had to look me in the eyes. “I get it. I see you, Faith.”

“How?! How could you possibly?—”

“How do you think angels fall? Do you think it just sounds like a nice fucking vacation?” I cocked a brow at her, my words sharp and direct.

“No. We fuck up. We choose a path we’re not meant to, and we’re thrust from heaven and fall, colliding with earth and having our grace corrupted on impact.

It’s not pleasant . And all three of us did it because we couldn’t be anything but who we were. So, yeah. I get it.”

Faith’s eyes, the look inside them echoed everything I’d felt when I fell. She gaped up at me, her lips parting softly, and I wanted to pull away. But I couldn’t.

“I wish I were able to keep myself away from you. It would be a lot safer and easier for us if I could. But…I don’t think either of us ever had a choice in that.

” I scoffed, bitter and so utterly over this.

Still, there was something to be said about a fallen angel and a nephilim being bound.

“You know you’re not meant to exist, right?

Well, angels aren’t meant to fall. And here the fuck we are.

I know those two can feel it too. There’s something here, and that means…

well, fuck, that means that something else is at play here.

I think you might be really fucking special, nephilim. Care to see what you can do?”

Eyeing the others behind me, Faith took us all in, the frenzy melting down into a low simmer. She was curious, and she wasn’t running. The nephilim could sense what I was talking about, and at the very least, the wrath pulled back. We might actually be okay.

Narrowing her eyes, she regarded me like a wild animal still considering gnawing my arm off. “Show me.”

I stood, looking down at her with my hand extended. “Sure. I can?—”

The electricity flared through the entire room, light bulbs exploding as an ozone pop echoed through the whole living area and beyond. In the ethereal distance, I heard it. The beating of heavy wings. They were here.

“Well, darlin’,” Simiel cut in, looking around and then up at the ceiling, “it looks like this is going to be a field test.”

“Why?” Faith stood up, her face a mask of concern and frustration.

“Because,” I summoned my corrupted flame blade to my hand, “company’s coming.”